Exploring relationship between marketing and sales - a case study of B2B ICT solution sales

Following the current trend of companies in changing and developing their businesses from transactional approach to relationship and solution oriented approach has set new requirements to internal cooperation of companies too. The relationship between marketing and sales has been identified to be critical to company's success here, but surprisingly little is known about it. The purpose of this study was to deepen understanding of the relationship between sales and marketing in business-to-business sales from operative sales employees' perspectives in solution selling context. The aim was to develop an explorative analytical construction and framework of the interface. The study was conducted as a literature review and an empirical qualitative explorative single case study. The data was collected by conducting six thematic interviews with sales employees of the case company. Observing sales and marketing, written documents and other materials used in sales were used as secondary source of information. The data was analyzed using qualitative case study analysis methods. The findings of the study support previous research findings of the interface between marketing and sales but also bring new propositions as analytical framework to construct the interface. As such, the interface was found to be a multi-dimensional and complex dynamic construction. As results of this study, there was an exploratory framework constructed. The construction consists of three explorative contexts of the interface: internal context, relationship emphasizing context and solution selling context. These contexts are further divided into lower levels as an outcome of the analysis. In addition the identified contexts, there are also conceptual domains identified, which are common to all the contexts. The role of mutual, cross-functional knowledge creation was found to be central in the interface.

The sources of complementary competitive advantages for systems’ manufacturers in the aircraft modernization market

Being a top of high technology industries, the aerospace represents one of the most complex fields of study. While the competitiveness of aircraft systems’ manufacturers attracts a significant number of researchers, some of the issues remain to be a blank spot. One of those is the after-sale modernization. The master thesis investigates how this concept is related to the theory of competitive advantages. Finding the routes in the framework of complex technological systems’ lifecycle, the key drivers of the aircraft modernization market are revealed. The competitive positioning of players is defined through multiple case studies in a form of several in-depth interviews. The key result of the research is the conclusion that modernization should be considered as an inherent component of strategy of any aircraft systems’ manufacturer, while the master thesis aims to support managerial decision making.

Adult education policy in the European Union during the Lisbon decade : the shift to vocational adult learning and work skills matching

This doctoral dissertation investigates the adult education policy of the European Union (EU) in the framework of the Lisbon agenda 2000–2010, with a particular focus on the changes of policy orientation that occurred during this reference decade. The year 2006 can be considered, in fact, a turning point for the EU policy-making in the adult learning sector: a radical shift from a wide--ranging and comprehensive conception of educating adults towards a vocationally oriented understanding of this field and policy area has been observed, in particular in the second half of the so--called ‘Lisbon decade’. In this light, one of the principal objectives of the mainstream policy set by the Lisbon Strategy, that of fostering all forms of participation of adults in lifelong learning paths, appears to have muted its political background and vision in a very short period of time, reflecting an underlying polarisation and progressive transformation of European policy orientations. Hence, by means of content analysis and process tracing, it is shown that the new target of the EU adult education policy, in this framework, has shifted from citizens to workers, and the competence development model, borrowed from the corporate sector, has been established as the reference for the new policy road maps. This study draws on the theory of governance architectures and applies a post-ontological perspective to discuss whether the above trends are intrinsically due to the nature of the Lisbon Strategy, which encompasses education policies, and to what extent supranational actors and phenomena such as globalisation influence the European governance and decision--making. Moreover, it is shown that the way in which the EU is shaping the upgrading of skills and competences of adult learners is modeled around the needs of the ‘knowledge economy’, thus according a great deal of importance to the ‘new skills for new jobs’ and perhaps not enough to life skills in its broader sense which include, for example, social and civic competences: these are actually often promoted but rarely implemented in depth in the EU policy documents. In this framework, it is conveyed how different EU policy areas are intertwined and interrelated with global phenomena, and it is emphasised how far the building of the EU education systems should play a crucial role in the formation of critical thinking, civic competences and skills for a sustainable democratic citizenship, from which a truly cohesive and inclusive society fundamentally depend, and a model of environmental and cosmopolitan adult education is proposed in order to address the challenges of the new millennium. In conclusion, an appraisal of the EU’s public policy, along with some personal thoughts on how progress might be pursued and actualised, is outlined.

Manifestation of the pairing symmetry in the vortex core structure in iron-based superconductors

The superconducting gap is a basic character of a superconductor. While the cuprates and conventional phonon-mediated superconductors are characterized by distinct d- and s-wave pairing symmetries with nodal and nodeless gap distributions respectively, the superconducting gap distributions in iron-based superconductors are rather diversified. While nodeless gap distributions have been directly observed in Ba1–xKxFe2As2, BaFe2–xCoxAs2, LiFeAs, KxFe2–ySe2, and FeTe1–xSex, the signatures of a nodal superconducting gap have been reported in LaOFeP, LiFeP, FeSe, KFe2As2, BaFe2–xRuxAs2, and BaFe2(As1–xPx)2. Due to the multiplicity of the Fermi surface in these compounds s± and d pairing states can be both nodeless and nodal. A nontrivial orbital structure of the order parameter, in particular the presence of the gap nodes, leads to effects in which the disorder is much richer in dx2–y2-wave superconductors than in conventional materials. In contrast to the s-wave case, the Anderson theorem does not work, and nonmagnetic impurities exhibit a strong pair-breaking influence. In addition, a finite concentration of disorder produces a nonzero density of quasiparticle states at zero energy, which results in a considerable modification of the thermodynamic and transport properties at low temperatures. The influence of order parameter symmetry on the vortex core structure in iron-based pnictide and chalcogenide superconductors has been investigated in the framework of quasiclassical Eilenberger equations. The main results of the thesis are as follows. The vortex core characteristics, such as, cutoff parameter, ξh, and core size, ξ2, determined as the distance at which density of the vortex supercurrent reaches its maximum, are calculated in wide temperature, impurity scattering rate, and magnetic field ranges. The cutoff parameter, ξh(B; T; Г), determines the form factor of the flux-line lattice, which can be obtained in _SR, NMR, and SANS experiments. A comparison among the applied pairing symmetries is done. In contrast to s-wave systems, in dx2–y2-wave superconductors, ξh/ξc2 always increases with the scattering rate Г. Field dependence of the cutoff parameter affects strongly on the second moment of the magnetic field distributions, resulting in a significant difference with nonlocal London theory. It is found that normalized ξ2/ξc2(B/Bc2) dependence is increasing with pair-breaking impurity scattering (interband scattering for s±-wave and intraband impurity scattering for d-wave superconductors). Here, ξc2 is the Ginzburg-Landau coherence length determined from the upper critical field Bc2 = Φ0/2πξ2 c2, where Φ0 is a flux quantum. Two types of ξ2/ξc2 magnetic field dependences are obtained for s± superconductors. It has a minimum at low temperatures and small impurity scattering transforming in monotonously decreasing function at strong scattering and high temperatures. The second kind of this dependence has been also found for d-wave superconductors at intermediate and high temperatures. In contrast, impurity scattering results in decreasing of ξ2/ξc2(B/Bc2) dependence in s++ superconductors. A reasonable agreement between calculated ξh/ξc2 values and those obtained experimentally in nonstoichiometric BaFe2–xCoxAs2 (μSR) and stoichiometric LiFeAs (SANS) was found. The values of ξh/ξc2 are much less than one in case of the first compound and much more than one for the other compound. This is explained by different influence of two factors: the value of impurity scattering rate and pairing symmetry.

Potential utilization ways of recovered chemical products from digestate

The study evaluates the potential application of chemical substances, obtained from biogas plants` by-products. Through the anaerobic digestion process with biogas the large amount of digestate is produced. This digestate mainly consists on the organic matter with the high concentration of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. During ammonia stripping and phosphorus precipitation the products- ammonia water, ammonium sulfate, ammonium nitrate, ferrous phosphate, aluminum phosphate, calcium phosphate and struvite can be recovered. These chemicals have potential application in different industrial sectors. According to Finnish market and chemicals properties, the most perspective industrial applications were determined. Based on the data, obtained through the literature review and market study, the ammonia water was recognized as a most perspective recovered substances. According to interview provided among Finnish companies, ammonia water is used for flue gas treatment in SNCR technology. This application has a large scale in the framework of Finnish industrial sectors. As well nitrogen with phosphorous can be used as a source of nutrients in the biological wastewater treatment plants of paper mills.